Strike the Blood

Kojou Akatsuki's days as an ordinary high school student in the Demon District of Itogami Island come to an abrupt end after a fateful encounter leaves him with the remarkable abilities of a vampire.

It isn't long before he is thrust into the center of attention when it is discovered that he is the fourth primogenitor, an immensely powerful vampire whom most consider to be merely a legend. Fearing Kojou's destructive potential, the Lion King Organization sends in an apprentice sword-shaman, Yukina Himeragi, to monitor, and should he become a threat, kill the boy deemed the world's most powerful vampire. Forced together by circumstance, the two form an unlikely alliance as Kojou comes to terms with his abilities and they both struggle to protect the city from various emerging chaotic forces.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Himeragi, Yukina Main

Taneda, Risa Japanese

Akatsuki, Kojou Main

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Aiba, Asagi Supporting

Seto, Asami Japanese

Rihavein, La Folia Supporting

Oonishi, Saori Japanese

Kirasaka, Sayaka Supporting

Hayama, Ikumi Japanese

Minamiya, Natsuki Supporting

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Kanase, Kanon Supporting

Itou, Kanae Japanese

Astarte Supporting

Iguchi, Yuka Japanese

Akatsuki, Nagisa Supporting

Hidaka, Rina Japanese

Yaze, Motoki Supporting

Oosaka, Ryouta Japanese

Nakayama, Nobuhiro Producer

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Yamazaki, Fumiki Producer

Fukuda, Jun Producer

Reviews

Oct 25, 2023

hexashadow13

Recommended

*Note: This is a review of the entire thing, all fives ‘seasons’ and the OVAs.*

tl;dr: An anime that tells a complete story with a good plot and fun characters, but that felt increasingly rushed.

This anime is a light novel adaptation that is pretty unique in how it was handled. It started with a two cour TV series that adapted the first six volumes and then two filler accompanying OVAs, which is pretty standard. It seems that afterwards it wasn’t greenlit for another TV series, which also occurs more often that it does not. However, it seems that the anime studio was really committed to the ... series so they released the second season as OVAs. And then the third, and then the fourth, and then the fifth.

In total across those seasons they released 45 OVA episodes and actually managed to adapt the entire twenty two book light novel series, which makes this one of the rare instances of a light novel series above 10+ volumes that was fully adapted. And that’s despite it apparently not being popular enough for a second TV season. That’s some dedication from the anime studio. Unfortunately, I feel this very much did come at a cost, as it feels like they were trying to get to the ending as soon as possible, which resulted in things feeling pretty rushed.

This anime primarily takes place on Itogami Island, an artificial island created off the coast of Japan with the goal of being a city where humans and demons could coexist. The anime starts off with the protagonist, Akatsuki Kojou, suddenly being the 4th Primogenitor, the Primogenitors being high ranking vampires and some of the strongest beings in the world. He has no clue how he became the 4th Primogenitor, as there’s a giant gap in his memory. He decides to just continue living his life as an ordinary high school student and to ignore his powers. However, considering how powerful he is it’s not like the rest of the world can just leave him alone.

The plot is centered around showing the progression of Kojou as he truly becomes the 4th Primogenitor. He’s incredibly powerful from the start, but he’s unable to use said power as he isn’t able to manifest the familiars that are the core to a vampire’s strength. He gets involved with various conflicts, and ends up sucking the blood of various female allies he makes along the way, which slowly unlocks his full abilities. These events are somewhat disconnected at first in that they don’t really contribute much to an overarching story. However, even from the beginning they all contribute heavily to world building regarding the truth behind Itogami Island and how Kojou became the 4th Primogenitor, and eventually that builds up to a series of final arcs that dive into the core of the matter and build up to a really solid conclusion plot wise to the series that I was pretty satisfied with, though I wished there was more to the epilogue.

Ultimately, I really did like the plot and loved how it escalated over time. Unfortunately, it also felt very rushed. It’s not that much of an issue at first when the arcs are pretty distinct. However, as they all seem to start connecting to each other and you start to need to have a deep understanding of what happened in previous arcs in order to follow what’s happening in the current one, it feels like the build up of lack of proper explanation results in things getting somewhat hard to understand. It’s easy enough to pick up the big things just from context and follow along with the plot even if the explanation is inadequate, but a lot of the finer details regarding character’s backgrounds, the various factions, the various magic systems, and the lore just flew over my head completely. Thus, while I was able to enjoy the overarching plot, I feel like there was a lot of depth to the world that it’s not really possible to appreciate from just the anime adaptation. It also resulted in most of the action feeling pretty random as it was never really able to flesh out how most abilities and such work.

Character wise Kojou gets a pretty decent character arc, though it felt pretty rushed. This is a harem series so the majority of the allies he makes over the course of the series, and all the ones that he sucks blood from, are girls. There are a few stand out male characters as well, mainly a close friend and a rival. However, the vast majority of the focus character wise is on the girls and their relationship to Kojou. The main girl is very clearly Himeragi Yukina, a girl sent to observe Kojou. Her character development is slow and occurs over the entire season, and she also gets slow and steady relationship development with Kojou across the entire season. She’s a well written character with great chemistry with Kojou and thus works very well as the main heroine.

The rest of the heroines don’t fare so well. Some fare better than others, with Kojou’s childhood friend Asagi being the best of the rest. But just in general it feels like none of them get enough development, both in terms of their character arcs or their relationship with Kojou. And that largely comes down to none of them getting enough screen time. There are a lot of girls, and there simply wasn’t enough time in the anime to do them all justice. They’re all decently well written in terms of broad strokes and they all have moments where they shine as well as fun moments with Kojou, and thus they’re all pretty likable, but it’s hard to really get invested in them at an individual level. It’s more so investment in them as a group, which is amusing and interesting considering just how many girls Kojou is involved with and the various dynamics involved. It really felt like there was potential for a lot more though, which is disappointing.

The production values have their ups and downs, but on the average I’d have to say they go down over the course of the series. That’s not to say things get bad, as most of the art and animation in the series is solid, but there are many more moments that felt impressive early on as compared to the towards the end, and many more parts that felt like they were cutting corners towards the end as compared to the beginning. Design wise there were a lot of good designs introduced in the first two seasons, but there was a lack of new good designs after that with designs in general either being weak or too similar to prior designs and thus lacking in variety. The OPs are overall pretty solid, but only the third season’s stood out as especially good. The EDs were all okay but none were all that memorable. The soundtrack also worked pretty well and had a decent amount of variety, but in general wasn’t particularly memorable.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jan 23, 2022

EarthPotato

Mixed Feelings

It's a generic harem anime where the plot is generic and repetitive and the MC dense as a black hole.

MC with OP potential but start with the lowest power level. Get beaten on the first half and come back with new power and beat the enemy. It's so generic that every episode I have this "Ah shit, here we go again" kind of feel to it.

The only thing that support me to watch this anime is have to be the heroines. Their character design are so cute and pretty so it's holding my sanity to keep with this generic plot that repeats on every same ... arc. Their personality is also appealing to me. Also the slight amount of fanservice keeps me from dropping the series. The bad part on the heroines is gotta be their background, all of them are somehow related to "being a tool" character.

To be honest, if you don't like the season 1 then I don't recommend for season 2 and 3 because they all the fucking same thing. Of course the plot progress but the flow of the story are basically the same. I don't know about season 4 because I already dropping the series because it's so fucking boring.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 27, 2022

Jaws491

Not Recommended

This show is actually fun to watch, but I have to admit that it is a bad guilty pleasure. This is primarily a harem anime with an obvious best girl winner and power fantasy. A different woman's blood typically unlocks another powerful ability of our MC as he tries to overcome life on an island where billions of dollars of damages in incurred on the daily. The sidekick is just as absurd, crying over our immortal MC getting killed even when she knows he's immortal or her blood could fix whatever plot is preventing him from coming back to life. And she has this stupid ... catch-phrase that she blurts before every big fight which got old very fast.

In Strike the Blood, it is as straightforward as it gets. The battles are cool and our MC is a nice guy Chad. He doesn't even have to try to get women to fall for him and want his offspring. Seriously, some of the characters literally propose it. I already know that this show is trashy and stupid, but it is still somehow entertaining and funny. Each new power unlocked is unique and the characters are all surprisingly decently written (besides the whole harem shenanigans). This is pretty much the Index series with an even worse plot. But even after all this just like with Index, I'm still watching it. I'm still going to get through every season because I need to see our MC unlock all of his powers and romance every woman in the world. I need to see him become a god. I need to see him BEAT GOD, which I could honestly see happening in the last season. Well, I'll find out soon enough.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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